Friday, December 07, 2007

The Army in Indonesia

In Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country ostensibly critical of Israel -- but whose killer armed forces have discreetly taken Israeli aid -- the President, Gen. Susilo, is in the process of appointing his country's army commander as the overall armed forces chief, even though it is not the army's turn in the supposed rotation.

Reuters, Jakarta (November 28, 2007) calls it "a move some observers say will ensure [Susilo] the support of the powerful military in the run-up to 2009 elections" (also see AFP, Jakarta, December 6, 2007, which draws the same conclusion) which is required since, as political Jakarta knows, no one wins and governs without the army.

The twist is that, a few years ago, when Indonesia started putting in non-army men (ie. air force and navy men) as armed forces commanders, this was hailed as progress and reform by the regime's academic and political apologists.

Their somewhat self-incriminating argument was that since most civilian killings were done by the army (which is true), things would be better with the navy (that helped abduct many tens of thousands in post-'99-vote Timor, and this year did a massacre in Java [see posting of November 13, 2007, "Vomiting to Death on a Plane. Arsenic Democracy."]) or the air force (that bombed Timor and Aceh) in charge.

If they believed their own logic they should now say that this appointment of an army man is a regression, a conclusion unlikely to be drawn, since the US Congress is just now deciding just how many millions they are going to give these very armed forces.

In fact, the State Department this week was putting out urgent queries around Washington that make it sound as if they are planning to openly aid Kopassus, the most notoriously sadistic army unit, and, historically, the most heavily US-trained one.

(Gen. Prabowo, the most notorious of all Kopassus commanders -- and that is saying a lot -- did his training at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, among other places, and, his murderous record notwithstanding, was once cited in a US Embassy memo as an example of the success of US training, specifically the IMET [International Military Education and Training] program. Prabowo once complained to an American that all this had been a mixed blessing for him since, he said, some other Indonesian generals made fun of him because he spoke English so well; he said they called him "The American").

The phone number of the US Congress is 202-224-3121, the members of the deciding Conference Committee are listed below, and the East Timor & Indonesia Action Network, ETAN (http://etan.org/) has documented background information and action suggestions, as a starting point.

Activism actually beat the US Executive (under presidents Bush I and Clinton) and, through military aid cutoffs forced via Congress, helped to bring down Suharto and free occupied Timor.

(Suharto's old security chief, Adm. Sudomo once told me that Suharto fell because they failed to open fire early and thoroughly on the Jakarta student demonstrators, because they feared further US aid cutoffs, as were imposed after the '91 Dili, Timor massacre. As I left his vast cement-bunker house, adorned with pictures of him and the US golfer, Arnold Palmer, I realized that he probably hadn't paid attention to who he was telling this story to, since on the way out he gave me a book that condemned me for my actions at Dili, and after.)

Those activist victories were possible in part because Indonesia was not a Washington priority. It was handled mainly by middle-level bureaucrats. The big boys were busy with other killer forces. Likewise, our entire fierce nine-year Congressional aid-cut struggle was ignored by the US corporate media, which was in a way frustrating, but in another way perhaps good, since that may have delayed the counter-mobilization by Jakarta, US corporations, and the US diplomatic/ military/ intelligence establishment that didn't get serious until 1994 with the launching of the US-Indonesia Society lobby group (in which Gen. Prabowo had a hand), and other initiatives.

 

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